The invention relates to an apparatus for franking flat items of mail removed individually or at the underside of a supplied stack and guided in a transport direction F at one side edge, such as envelopes, mailers, cards, printed products, sleeves, labels or the like, comprising a separating station formed from a feeder for items of mail that are individually supplied or stacked above one another and a separating device, and a downstream processing line of a franking machine, following in a conveying manner in the transport direction of the items of mail, for franking/printing the separated items of mail.
Sleeves are closable mailing sleeves made of (semi-)card for flat, in particular comparatively thin, products, such as a printed product, a CD or products of similar format.
An apparatus of the above described type is known from EP 1 832 536 A1. This franking machine for processing items of mail, as mentioned at the beginning, has a conveying device formed by conveyor rollers supported above one another, with which items of mail are drawn out of a feeder magazine, arranged behind the same in the conveying direction, at the underside of a stack. For this purpose, the feeder is formed with a front wall for positioning the items of mail, the lower edge of which forms with the conveying plane a removal gap, through which the items of mail are transported individually. For this purpose, a conveyor roller of the conveyor plane that is arranged after the removal gap in the conveying direction F is assigned a guide roller interacting with the first and arranged above the same which is mounted slightly upstream with respect to the axis of rotation of the conveyor roller, downstream of the items of mail. This guide roller is rotatably mounted with a force acting counter to that acting in the same direction as the conveying direction and holds back excess items of mail queuing at the removal gap.
It is important that the items of mail arriving stacked in the feeder but also individual ones are transported in an accurate position in order that no multiple feeds arise, in particular when the items of mail differ in terms of different dimensions and envelope materials, in order to ensure reliable and interruption-free transport.